Especially for those who helped bankroll this year's nine Academy Award nominees for Best Picture.

When it came to the biggest bang for the buck, size mattered. "Gravity" is both one of the most expensive Oscar contenders and the most successful. The 3D outer space thriller has racked up $700.9 million worldwide, and cost $100 million to make. Despite that price tag, "Gravity" represented the highest return on investment, with the critically garlanded adventure making back its budget more than six times over. It's the highest grossing Best Picture nominee since 2010′s "Inception."

"Last year was a strong year for adult movies," Jeff Bock, a box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations, told TheWrap. "Usually you have one or two films that connect with audiences and critics, but this year even the art house nominees did better than expected."

"Gravity's" status as the best return on investment among the nominees is a change from last year's Academy Awards contenders. In 2013, "Beasts of the Southern Wild" was the lowest-budgeted Best Picture nominee - which cost a mere $1.5 million. Its worldwide gross of $22 million represented a return of more than ten times its budget, easily making it the film with the highest profit margins.

This year, nearly all of the chief contenders for Hollywood's top honor have doubled their production budgets; four of them have earned north of $100 million. It's not clear if they're in the black, however, because studios do not reveal how much they spend on marketing and distribution, nor do they break down the complex web of financing required to get many of these productions off the ground.

To calculate ROI for each nominee, TheWrap took the film's gross, subtracted its reported cost and then divided that figure by its budget before multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. (Got it? We good? Good.)

So what other films proved to be big ROI winners? Here's the breakdown: "American Hustle" ($40 million budget, $214.3 million gross), "Philomena" ($12 million budget, $77.9 million gross), "Dallas Buyers Club" ($5 million budget, $30.4 million gross) and "12 Years a Slave" ($20 million budget, $109.7 million gross) all made more than four times their production costs.

The lowest returns came from "Nebraska" and "Her," which saw ROIs of 32.5 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Factoring in adverting costs and the percentage of ticket sales theater owners receive, those films may have trouble breaking even from their theatrical runs and will have to chase profitability in home entertainment windows.

Yet, when it comes to box office muscle, this year's crop of Best Picture candidates are no match for last year's contenders. Together, the nominees have earned just shy of $800 million domestically, while 2012′s nominees pulled in more than $1 billion stateside, according to BoxOffice.com editor-in-chief Phil Contrino. Best Picture nominees for that ceremony included such critical hits as "Zero Dark Thirty," "Lincoln," and "Life of Pi."

"These titles aren't as commercially viable," Contrino said. "The Academy made quirkier choices this year with the inclusion of 'Her' and 'Nebraska' and 'Dallas Buyers Club.' If you look at last year's list, the only two movies that were not mainstream and that causal moviegoers might not see and be happy with were 'Amour' and 'Beasts of the Southern Wild'."

The Best Picture race is widely projected to come down to "Gravity" and "12 Years a Slave" — with "American Hustle" gaining some ground. Next week, "Gravity" makes its home entertainment debut before the awards telecast, and "12 Years a Slave" will premiere on disc two days after the Oscars. "American Hustle" hits store shelves in the middle of March. That means that any box office bounce may be short-lived, although both Contrino and Bock argue "12 Years a Slave" has the most to gain from victory.

"There's been some resistance by people to go and see it," Contrino said. "The word is that it's intense, but a Best Picture win would be massive. I'd compare it to 'Schindler's List,' which was not a fun film, but people went to see because it was important and a Best Picture win would do that for '12 Years a Slave'."

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